So Long Sweetness!

A box of delicious dark chocolate candy from my sweetie

There is much I want to say about my decision to give up desserts for Lent this year.  I like the challenge of it, but mostly, I have been hearing a whisper in my heart lately that I need to take better care of myself than I have been.  I do not know how or why, but I seem to have fallen into a somewhat self destructive pattern with my eating lately and I'm determined to be different.  Feelings of guilt, shame, angst, fear, history, patterns, faith, worth, emotion, courage, security, strength and love are all tangled up in this one for me.  

I am not naive enough to believe that just giving up dessert for the next 40 days will solve all of my problems, or shed radical insight into personal areas of my heart that need changing.  As embarrassing as it is to admit, I have been loving dessert more than myself and even Jesus lately and I am ready for that to stop.

So as the next forty days unfold, I pray that my heart would be open to what God has to say to me about this area of my life that I have allowed to fall out of His control.  I'm not giving up dessert in effort to lose weight- at least physically.  However, I am trying to lose some spiritual weight I feel I have been carrying around lately.  I believe (in advance of the miracle) that Jesus can and will use the gaping hole left both on my plate and in my soul (that one I have been using dessert to fill or numb) for something He knows to be for my good and for His purposes. 

I simply cannot think of a better way to prepare my heart to celebrate and remember the life I have been given in Jesus through his death and resurrection on the cross, than to give up and surrender my beloved desserts- something I have been slowly allowing with each sweet, delicious bite, to steal my sense of life, vigor, energy, self esteem, hope and capability.  

 

Now, don't get me wrong, I am not saying I will never have another bite of dessert again, or that dessert is evil or anything like that!  But for the next 40 days, I am going to practice intentionality where my eating dessert and relationship with Jesus are concerned - and I pray that I will encounter Jesus anew along the way.

after a few days...so delicious!

Now, everyone say a little prayer for Joe and Lily as they are stuck with me while I do this!  Thank goodness they love me as I am and are really good sports!

Lily's reaction when I told her I was giving up dessert and that I needed her help.  (Just kidding!)